Tuesday, March 13, 2018

DONALD TRUMP: TOO PURE FOR THIS DEGRADED WORLD

On the radio today, Rush Limbaugh said that President Trump is finally hitting his stride:

I think Trump is on a roll. I think he’s gaining confidence, and now, “To hell with it!” He’s putting Trump people, people he likes, people he believes in, people who understand him, people who like him and that he likes. He’s putting them in key positions in his inner circle. It’s a positive.

So what prevented him from doing that before? Well, it was a problem anyone would have, according to Limbaugh:

You ever done this? I have. Pretend that you’re running for president, pretend that you win, but nothing else about your life changes. Just one day, you’re out there doing what you do, and one day you decide to run — and you win. Now you have to pick a secretary of state. Now you have to pick a secretary of commerce and on down the line. You’ve gotta pick somebody to lead your Council of Economic Advisors. You have to pick somebody to go over to Commerce. You have to pick somebody at the Food and Drug Administration and the EPA and all this.

I've never done that, but go on.

How many of you know anybody who is expert in any of those areas? So since you don’t, and since most of us wouldn’t, where would you go? Who would you rely on for advice? Who would you go to find people to staff your cabinet?

... at some point you do have to rely on people that you trust to make recommendations to you to put people in your cabinet. When that starts happening, that’s when it can all go wrong. What if you’re asking people who don’t want you to succeed?

What if the suggestions you’re getting are not the best fit for you? Say you’re relying on... Pick. I don’t care who it is. You’re relying on somebody to advise you on picking a secretary of state, and what if that person really thinks you have no business being president so you need somebody in there that’s gonna actually run foreign policy for you since you’re such a dodo bird. What if Trump was relying on somebody to give him advice? Not just secretary of state, but any other position?

If you're running for president, why the hell are you taking advice from people who don't think you belong in the Oval Office? Either you're such a terrible candidate that most people with any appropriate knowledge think you're unfit, or you've made no effort to find people who really know what they're doing.

In Trump's case, of course, both of these things were true. And if Michael Wolff is right, he didn't expect to win and everyone around him was gobsmacked when he did win, and no one had any idea what to do at that point, except maybe Chris Christie, who'd been working on staffing a Trump administration. But Christie was in conflict with Jared Kushner and warned Trump about hiring Mike Flynn, so he was canned. He at least was a well-connected, reasonably savvy political pro who seemed to have Trump's best interests in mind (if in a pathetically sycophantic way). But the one pro who was working on this was let go, because YOLO.

But that's perfectly normal -- hey, you and I would do the same thing! But you and I wouldn't run for president, and if we did, we'd try a lot harder to do the job right.